Lately I have been rereading an old favorite of mine: What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth by Wendell Berry. Berry’s idea of homecoming resonated with me because I have spent the past few months back in my home town when I fully intended to still be in school. Covid-19 sent me packing though, and I went from living on campus to living in my parents’ house. It was easy to be resentful of this. I missed my friends, my professors, my beautiful campus overlooking the Ohio River, but Berry reminded me how crucial it is to return home.
During the time we have spent with Covid-19, we have been continuously reminded that we need to stimulate the already desperate economy. This has been a time of darkness, but also a time where I have seen such a commitment from many people to shop locally, to protect small businesses, and to support those who take the biggest hits in times like these. Berry refers to a community economy as “a sharing of fate.” I have been acutely aware of how my actions affect others' fates in these times. Berry encourages us to embrace these shared outcomes and to use our actions wisely, which I have been lucky enough to see many people doing. I have also seen people taking to the earth like never before. When public spaces filled with people are no longer an option, it seems people are rushing to the forests, eager to spend time in a different space. During this time, people have flocked to art. We are writing, drawing, painting, gardening, anything to remind people that we are here. Most importantly, we are sharing. We are sharing these gifts with others and celebrating as theirs are shared with us.
Just as we started to handle Covid-19 with some much-needed grace, the world threw another wild card at us. We knew this wild card had been held for the entire game; however, we never quite knew when it would get played. I cannot talk about the authors I have been studying and what I have been learning without connecting it to our world. Everything has a context, and the environment I am learning in is no different. As May began to drift away, we saw frightening events, not unlike ones we have seen before. We saw the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and David McAtee. These deaths have shaken America in a way I have never seen.
The tragic deaths of these innocent Black people have resulted in much justified rage and a longing for change. Just as I saw at the beginning of the Covid-19 panic, people are banding together out of fear but also, more importantly, resilience. We are becoming well-informed citizens. We began May confronting an invisible virus taking over, and we are ending it the same way by going head to head with a virus that has been threatening the lives of many Black people since way before Covid-19. That virus is racism. However, there are no scientists in white lab coats developing a one-and-done cure for us here. Instead, there are teachers. There are amazingly selfless people informing a public who frankly should have been informed long ago, myself included. These teachers can give us the ingredients we need to fight this, but it is our job to mix them in a meaningful way.
I had intended for my first week’s blog to be entirely inspired by Berry’s ideas in his book, but it soon became clear to me that this would not suffice. As I saw Black people being misrepresented and targeted, I knew I needed to turn to another book I would be reading this summer: Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman. Penniman and Berry’s ideas have many overlaps. For one, Penniman describes her farm’s subscription program as being “based on the African American Kwanzaa principle of Ujamaa, meaning ‘cooperative economics.’” This idea of working with one another to accomplish shared goals is so important right now. Penniman says something that seems as if it could have been said just this week about our country: “It’s a clear sign that this country needs a united social movement to rip out racism at its roots and dismantle the caste system that makes these young people unable to see that their beautiful Black lives do matter.” During the protests that have taken place, we have seen towns with single grocery stores lacking the food they need to survive. We have seen families without the means to take on the burdens left from the wrongful deaths of their loved ones. We have seen an entire race in mourning, understandably exhausted and encumbered by the targets this nation has put on their backs.
In these moments, I have to think of this idea of shared economics. I have to hope that these events are to teach us how to come together and support one another. Berry states that “our ‘identity’ is located not in the impulse of selfhood but in deliberately maintained connections.” We need to be deliberate right now. We need to think long and hard about what companies and corporations we are supporting. We need to be thinking now more than ever, where is our food coming from? Whose voices are we choosing to hear at this time? What groups are being exploited for the benefits of white people? In what ways have we been complicit? As I see people going to the forests, surrounding themselves with the plants, asking the trees to listen, I have to hope they are doing some quiet but loud reflection. I hope we are listening to the stories of the land that so many Black people were forced to tend to and maintain while our white ancestors prospered. I hope we will look at the farmlands surrounding us and remember who cared for them, who raised them. And I hope we will begin to support these people. We have taken too much from them already.
At the end of the introduction to her book, Penniman says, “For the harm that may come from the limitations in my perspective, I apologize, and pledge to do what I can to uplift the voices of the Black farmers who complete and augment the narrative.” My perspective on the events I have just talked about is severely limited. I am a white, able-bodied, college-educated woman, and that is the only perspective I am able to write from. I don’t know what it is like to see people who look like me dying at the hands of those committed to protecting them. I do not know what it is like to not see people who look like me represented in the farming industry. What I can do is surround myself with the voices of people who have experienced these things and begin to learn from them. I am sorry for the things I will inevitably get wrong, and I will work to amend them. I hope from this blog post, my first blog post, you will take away the idea of community. May we form one together and build each other up. I hope you will think about connection. May we connect with those who are hurting, those who are underserved, those who our privileges exist at the expense of. And I desperately hope you will think of commitment. This is not a one-time thing. This is not what a vaccine will be for Covid-19. This is ongoing treatment. May we commit to educating ourselves, to holding one another accountable, and to researching and engaging with the stories we do not learn by default.